If I did another degree and went into a different field it would probably not stanch my guilt over having done the first one. I should not have gone to college at a research university and I should not have gone to graduate school, but I did, and I have not removed from myself the thorns pressed into me in revenge.

It hurt them too much. They said so at the time and I did not think it made sense. I understood later that it was true, it really hurt them and that is why they pressed these thorns into me. They were suffering and they needed a different kind of person. I could have become that person and I did not. I was selfish.

I always thought that if I could get away from the scene of my crime I might be able to stop having it so present in my mind. This would definitely distract me, but I am no longer sure it would cure me.

Axé.

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8 responses to “Realization”

I will set up a series of rules for you to follow. If you break them, you and I will both agree that you will be hurting me, personally, even though these rules place absurd constraints on your ability to live your life as you wish. I may even be sincerely hurt, if I set things up that way, but you should probably tell me to go fuck myself if I propose that deal to you, or anything at all similar to that. Yet we accept that reasoning from our parents, somehow. I guess Larkin had it right.

The suffering, the shouting, the wailing, the recriminations, the feeling of being a punching bag and also a blood donor, hooked up to various people and feeding them from my veins — when I get these images it is sometimes in reference to something happening here.

I think it means this committee I am on is underhanded and that someone’s behavior is bullying.

You could not have become that person they wanted. You could have turned yourself inside out trying, cut your toes and heels off like Cinderella’s stepsisters trying to fit into her tiny shoes, and you still would not have fit. Your relatives would still have complained about how you weren’t *enough* of the Barbie/blood donor/punching bag they were looking for.

You will still always be you. You can be a first-rate reseacher and professor or a really lousy home-care aide.

I like this “Martyrdom cults (like that surrounding Sylvia Plath), which link failure, death, and female approval, are abominable.” I think that was the main feminist icon when I was growing up in poetry circles in the 70s. Sylvia Plath.

Secretos y Saberes

1. While writing here is an excellent exercise for my English style and for writing as such, it is bad for my style in Spanish. Therefore some posts may be in languages other than English.

2. Corybantic, rather anarchical and possibly Liangian, this blog is opposed to everything I find mean. It criticizes things you may hold dear. It resists authoritarianism and received ideas. It vaporizes Fascists.

3. This blog is a codex you have found. It speaks to one and all. But it also holds secrets and hides its face, for I who now perform the ancient text must adapt its words for modernity. I am a sculpted skull on a stela at Copán.